Will Office 365 upseat Google Apps?

Productivity apps on the cloud till now has been dominated by Google Apps. But off late, Microsoft is upping its ante and making some defined in roads on to Google territory and the enterprise space is abuzz with comparisons - Google Apps vs Office 365 - across cost, value and functionality.
While Google definitely has an early mover advantage and given its clout on the web certainly has the market understanding on cloud and its dynamics. But Microsoft's office suite functionality and the level of sophistication makes it a key contender in the cloud productivity apps space.

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Let's look at how Microsoft stacks it up with Google Apps. Says Ramkumar Pichai, general manager, Microsoft office Division, Microsoft India, "Google definitely has an early mover advantage with Google Apps. With the launch of Office 365 however, companies have an enterprise ready solution offering a rich and consistent experience across platforms and the support of the extensive Microsoft ecosystem of partners to sell and deploy this solution. This has spurred the adoption of Office 365 across all sizes of companies and not just in the small and medium enterprise segment."
Sources at Microsoft say that Office 365 is on track to become one of the fastest growing offers in Microsoft's history. Office 365 is an enterprise class software that has Exchange for mail, SharePoint for collaboration and document management, Lync for instant messaging and PC to PC calling and other Office applications. This entire portfolio is available on Cloud- apps as a service.

Microsoft says that the new Office works across devices and platforms, from smartphones and tablets to desktops and from PCs to even on popular browsers. The fast and fluid experience lets businesses do more in less time, with minimalist styling improves user experience significantly. Says Pichai, "In today's hypercompetitive marketplace, it has become increasingly important to empower people and teams to deliver exceptional customer experiences, be more productive, and respond quickly to change and opportunities. Offcie 365 takes productivity to a whole new level where Google Apps will look absolutely outdated. The new Office solution is built on four key areas - Devices, Cloud, Social and Control."

According to some experts the Office 365's edge over Google Apps comes from the enterprise-class security and delivering cloud on users' terms. "We give enough reasons to businesses in India to choose Office 365 over Google Apps, as Office 365 is a true productivity suite designed from the ground up to meet business requirements for security, privacy, reliability and manageability."

Microsoft is pitching on customer experience and harping on its enterprise ready and leading cloud features and also cashing in on the perception ‘that Google apps is often seen as a consumer solution', to its advantage. Moreover the company believes the customer centric features it offers will certainly be a big winner across segments.

Meanwhile its Cloud benefits, Offcie 365 is personalized, cloud-connected and simpler than ever. The new Office works the way businesses do and helps them get more done at home, on the job and on the go. Now with ‘social' becoming a big feature, Offcie 365 has socially collaboration features as well. And it has more control and security as well.

Says Pichai, "Indian customers are adopting Office 365 four times faster than its predecessor BPOS. Clearly there is strong appetite in the market, even among the smallest businesses, to get powerful productivity and collaboration tools. Adoption is not only strong among enterprise customers with majority of customers are small to medium sized businesses with less than 1,000 employees."

Cost Implications

According to Microsoft sources, it says that many IT teams have found that the projected versus actual costs of using Google Apps for Business (GAFB) increases their total cost of ownership to far more than Google's claimed $50/user annual fee. Says Pichai, "GAFB is missing critical features and functionality that businesses get at no additional cost with Microsoft products. Adding those missing features and functionality to make GAFB enterprise-ready can cost businesses more for deployment, IT support, and user training and lost productivity."
As Pichai sums it up, "Office 365 delivers enterprise class capabilities, the familiarity of Office, and a cloud service backed by Microsoft. For a cost difference that amounts to the price of a cup of coffee, small businesses that are considering a move to the cloud have more reasons than ever before to choose Microsoft." 

CIOs Due Diligence

At the decision making stage while opting for productivity apps on the cloud, the top 5 things CIOs should factor in are: 

- Customers should be able to choose any mix of a combination of on-premise and cloud while adopting IT and can keep evolving the mix as they move along
- Customers should have the flexibility to adopt and move between private and public clouds seamlessly
- Customers should have the confidence that their data will be secure and protected. They should evaluate the various security standards supported by the cloud service.
- Customers should closely understand the uptime guaranteed as per the SLA and the contractual implications in case that guarantee is not met by the service provider.
- Customers should evaluate the performance of the solution across platforms and devices.